Scouts: On a completely somber note, I feel incredibly saddened by the continued violence in this country. In case you are just waking up, there was a coordinated shooting in Dallas late last night. During an otherwise peaceful protest of yet another police involved shooting, eleven police offers were shot by sniper fire, 5 of whom are dead. Reports are still conflicting and there’s a lot of misinformation at the moment as news outlets rush to be the first to report some new information and are not bothering to fact check anything. Anywhere from 2-4 snipers are reportedly involved with investigations ongoing. Three people are in custody, while a fourth exchanged gunfire with police and reportedly dead. This is incredibly saddening and maddening. My heart goes out to the families of those that were just trying to do their jobs. Speaking as one who grew up always wondering if Daddy would make it home alive or not, it’s incredibly terrifying to hear of such news. Police officers should be held to a higher standard. They should be an example. But just like everyone else, they are flawed and there are some terrible police officers. There are also by and large a lot of wonderful officers who are just trying to make their tiny little corner of the world a little safer. The violence, the killing, the bloodshed needs to stop. The city of Dallas, and the rest of America will band together as we always do during times of tragedy. We will rise up. Please keep the family members of all victims and all those affected by these incidents in your hearts and thoughts. We all need to band together to stop the madness.
Padres 6, Dodgers 10 –LA showed up to the All-Star break a little early. Drew Pomeranz gave up just 2 hits over 7 innings.
Braves 4, Cubs 3 – Prof: This is what’s known as a Prof Agony Special, in which I am happy and angry no matter who wins the game. Dammit.
Yankees 5, Indians 4 – New York got to Cleveland’s starting pitching, a very rare feat indeed.
Twins 10, Rangers 1 – Prof: What got into the Twins? Kurt Suzuki, of all people, went 2-for-4 in an absolute swamping of the Rangers. Twins got five runs in the eighth inning alone.
Angels 5, Rays 1 – Interesting no call on the lack of slide by Pujols. I guess it’s not technically illegal, but the next time, he may end up taking one to the face.
Pirates 1, Cardinals 5 – Adam Wainwright does a nice job cooling off the hot Pirates as the Cardinals retake second place in the division.
Phillies 2, Rockies 11 – Prof: Trevor the Neverending Story keeps on keeping on with his 20th and 21st home run of the season. Why this dude isn’t in the Home Run Derby is beyond me. Now I’m definitely voting for him for my Final Vote All Star.
Nationals 7, Mets 9 – A ton of home runs in this one, a lot of back and forth, but all everyone’s talking about are these slides.
Athletics 3, Astros 1 – Prof: Tell me truthfully, at the beginning of the season would you have pegged Rich Hill as being one of the best pitchers in the AL? No. You would have laughed your butt off. Well, even fresh off of a DL stint, Hill was 8-3 going into the evening and got the win tonight, fanning 10 while he was at it.
Tigers 4, Blue Jays 5 – Rich Hill beats Doug Fister. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Mariners 3, Royals 4 – Prof: Here we thought we would see a pitching performance for the ages, a super rare ultra low Maddux from the Mariners’ James Paxton. Headed into the eighth, Paxton had shut out the Royals with only 57 pitches thrown. 57! And then it suddenly all went to heck, culminating with a collapse by Mariners closer Steve Cishek to give Kansas City an impressive comeback win.
Fan Interference 
Nats had their chances last night, with leads of 4-1 and 6-4, but Lucas Giolito couldn’t hold the first, and Oliver Perez couldn’t hold the second, giving up a three-run bomb to Wilmer Flores. The Werth slide in the 9th lead to a verbal confrontation between Mike Rizzo and Jim Joyce (the 2nd base ump and crew chief) after the game, according to reports; I understand the intent of the rule, but I think there have to be more objective criteria applied, like either the rule says “no contact, period”, or maybe a clearly marked sliding box, or something. (I know the latter’s not practical, but I don’t think these things should be left up to interpretation like they are right now.) I’m not blaming the call for the Nats losing; if you give up nine runs, you don’t deserve to win.
The Nats played this game a bit short-handed. They’ve been going with an eight man bullpen and only four position players on the bench since Papelbon was activated on Monday, and Ryan Zimmerman was a late scratch yesterday with a “sore something”; that’s an actual quote, and makes me long for the precision of the NHL’s injury reports, which at least narrow it down to 50% of the body. I look for them to address this for the next three days.
In things you don’t see every day, Oliver Perez entered the game as a reliever and went 2-2 at the plate with a single and double. Perez entered the game in the 4th, and lead off the 5th, but his second at bat was a product of the short bench I mentioned above.
In other news, Mets fans gave Jose Reyes a standing ovation after he hit a home run in the 4th, so I guess his transgressions are forgiven.
Strasburg vs. Syndergaard tonight, so I don’t expect another slo-pitch softball type slugfest, but one never knows, does one?
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Dear Professor. It’s turning out that it was a lone Afghan War veteran who is dark skinned and ironically doesn’t believe in the BLM movement anyway. He’s a symptom of the inevitable mass shootings that are to come. Only this time they are highly trained Service members who have no job, no wife, girlfriend, husband or boyfriend, no mental health care because of government cutbacks and no reason to believe that anyone who can do something about it in Government doing anything about it anyway!
I remember when the first Service member shot up a McDonald’s in the early 80’s and how much it horrified Americans! I hate to say it, but it’s about to get a whole lot worse. These men and women are the best trained killers in the fucking world! The NRA are buying legislation to arm more people to open carry everywhere, I don’t know how the military does things now but if I am a fucking Veteran whose wife left him and I don’t have my 60 grand job after four fucking tours of fucking WAR! I might just take out every fucking John Wayne open carry idiots before I go after the soft targets.
Anyway, write your congressional leaders to fund the fucking Veteran agendas. These are not people who you want to piss of anymore than they are already.
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